(Yicai) April 3 -- The second-hand home market in Hangzhou, the capital city of China’s eastern Zhejiang province, has significantly recovered last month thanks to the easing of purchase restrictions.

Nearly 8,560 second-hand houses were sold in Hangzhou in March, up 236 percent from the previous month, according to statistics from the Hangzhou Beike Research Institute. Their price was around CNY29,767 (USD4,115) per square meter, up 2 percent in the period.

Hangzhou announced in a document issued on March 14 that the qualifications of buyers seeking to purchase pre-owned homes in the city no longer need to be reviewed. Previously, buyers needed either a local household registration or tax record.

Apartment visits in Hangzhou at real estate agencies soared 224 percent last month from February and 39 percent from a year earlier, the highest monthly figure in the past four years, the data from the Hangzhou Beike Research Institute also showed.

A luxury real estate agency told a local media outlet that it received many more clients than usual from non-residents from neighboring cities such as Yiwu, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, and there are even clients from Taiwan.

Shanghai residents planning to buy a house in neighboring Hangzhou are usually young people who just started working and have a budget of CNY2 million to CNY3 million (USD276,430 to USD414,660), so Hangzhou is a more suitable option for them, a person living in Shanghai planning to buy a house in Hangzhou told Yicai.

The supply is also rising together with the demand. The inventory of second-hand homes on sale in Hangzhou jumped 147 percent to 153,000 as of the end of last month from February, up 3 percent from a year earlier, according to the Hangzhou Beike Research Institute. However, most pre-owned apartments are still sold at low prices despite the increase in price per sqm.

The second-hand house market is picking up because lower prices call for more transactions, said Jian Shangguan, head of the Hangzhou Beike Research Institute. Pre-owned home transactions in Hangzhou will be higher in the second quarter than in the first quarter, he predicted.

Editor: Futura Costaglione